


Marionette (Incomplete)

by StJason



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-04
Updated: 2014-01-23
Packaged: 2017-12-22 09:41:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/911731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StJason/pseuds/StJason
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson, returning from Afghanistan, withdraws from the world and discovers the art of puppet-making.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The house was a wreck. Even if everything wasn't covered in an inch of dust, there was the distinct smell of rat (God, let it be just rat) droppings. And John was certain that he could see a beam of sunlight through the wall. 

The solicitor was speaking "...and so it took a while for the challenge to be resolved. After they evaluated the value of the home, they decided that the value of the property wasn't worth the legal case. The existing funds were seized, but your uncle's half of the duplex was left. The other side is owned by a management company who rents it out, I believe."

"So, it's mine then?" John leaned heavily on his cane, he was thoroughly tired of the whole thing already. Occasional letters while he was overseas that he ignored as being irrelevant. Phone calls once he got back. Meetings with obscure relatives... third... removed... cousins. Or something. Then getting shot and sent home. Hospitals. Physical therapy. This stupid cane.

The lawyer held up the keys, three old-style Yale keys on a cheap plastic keyring from a towing company. "Just sign the papers and it is all yours."

Three signatures later, a couple of pleasantries exchanged, and five minutes later. John Watson stood alone in the dirty hallway of his own house. 221b Baker Street. He took a deep breath, let it out, and hobbled off in search of a broom.

John didn't remember his uncle well. Apparently he wasn't even his real uncle, but a cousin of some sort of his father's. Having no heirs and with a badly-written homemade will that only confused the solicitors more. There was a tussle as the people who technically owned the land, a distant branch of the Watson family that had moved to New Zealand, and several creditors. The house sat vacant for several years, gathering dust. Eventually, everyone decided that they didn't want it enough, so the house ended up Johns.

The place was a wreck. Apparently his uncle had been something of a shut-in in his last years. The kitchen was a horror with cold and cold running rust-water. The refrigerator was the old type with the compressor on top. The cabinets were warped enough that half of the drawers wouldn't open. And the less said about the wallpaper, the better.  
The living room was no better. A mid-seventies television that didn't work. Several leather chairs that were nice once, but were split now. And a brown rug that was never nice.

It went on. The bedrooms were... well, serviceable. The floors creaked. Half of the door frames were out of true. And the basement featured something that looked very much like a high-water mark about a foot off the floor. John fell in love with the place right away. He fell in love with a distant memory of being very young and looking through a picture book in the rose garden out back (overgrown, but still full of roses). He fell in love with the idea of bringing this wreck of a house back to life using just his own hard work. But most of all, he fell in love with the study. Three walls were floor to ceiling bookshelves filled with a random assortment of books of every flavor, set in no order whatsoever. The fourth wall had a gigantic fireplace. The room was snug, dark, and well insulated from the world. John could almost imagine being the last man alive, surrounded by these books and a comfortable chair. Which reminded him... he needed new chairs as well. 

His pension was not a lot. Repairs would take time. He spent the first night cleaning up, sweeping out the dust. Finding out which light switches worked. He ran the water in the kitchen until it ran clear. It still tasted metallic, but good enough for tea. Two of the burners on the stove still worked. He made a list of the things he would need to do. Check the roof for leaks. Check the basement for leaks. Check to make sure that all the broken windows were boarded up. Check the grounds to make sure that there were no bums or rubbish drops in his backyard. Find nearby grocery store. Find nearby hardware store. Buy hammer, nails, caulk. Find out how much a new refrigerator, oven, windows would cost. Have electrician look at bedroom, upstairs hallway. Downstairs bathroom. Plumber? Could he rent a dumpster for a week or two to get rid of some of the extra stuff. A faint noise in the house reminded him, and he added 'exterminator' to the list.

Feeling cheerful for the first time in... it seemed forever... John climbed the stairs, flipped futility at the lightswitch before he felt his way along the dark hallway to the bedroom. The switch there worked for a brief second that it took the bulb to 'pop'.

Alone in the dark and quiet, John muttered to himself "Got to add lightbulbs to the shopping list".


	2. Chapter 2

The bus stop was several blocks away, and John was balancing eight sacks from his shopping. Between that and the rain, he was quickly becoming crabby. Mostly, he wanted to get in, get dry, and maybe have some of the sliced turkey he bought (good god, when did the prices go up that high?). A few houses down from his own door, a light blue Citroen splashed a puddle onto his shoes. He muttered curses and stomped the rest of the way, where a young woman was getting out of the car.

"Oh! You must be my new neighbor, in B, right?" She said extending a hand "My name is Isabel." She stood there for a moment with hand out, until John looked pointedly down at his bags. She pulled her hand back, embarrassed.

"John Watson". he replied. "Nice to meet you" he added not really meaning it. He was oddly annoyed by her, the shoes, yes. But also... something about having her as a neighbor grated against his nerves, a subliminal nails on the chalkboard feeling. The rain was starting to pick up, so they exchanged hurried pleasantries on the way in, then escaped into their respective doorways.

 

The basement had a puddle. Not large, but enough to bring out the strong moldy scent that drew John down. The funny thing about it was although the puddle was spreading from one corner, there wasn't a leak per se. At least none that John could see. He sighed and added it to the list of things that needed to be fixed.

The telly didn't work. He didn't know anyone since coming back. His few army buddies he had let fade away. So, instead, John curled up in one of the overstuffed chairs in the library and read. There was a old book on carpentry that caught his eye as being possibly useful. It turned out to be more woodworking then carpentry, though. Still, the old fashioned language and antique typeface interested him, but not as much as the lavish hand-drawn illustrations. How old was this book? Turn of the century? Elaborate line drawings showed how to carve a bannister, or chisel leaf designs into a chair arm. Lion claw feet for table feet and solid wooden mugs waterproofed with cow-hoof glue and wax. Spoons. Bobbins for thread. Real trenchers... John felt himself pulled in, wondering if he could do the same. The final chapter was a real treat, all about toys. Solid-looking horses and soldiers. Delicate deer and flowers. Dolls of various sizes. But at the end, in amazing detail, was a fully articulated marionette. Like in Peter Pan. It looked simple... time consuming, but simple enough. John stretched and looked around. His eyes felt gritty. The hallway outside was dark. How long had be been reading? John shook his head and wondered where he could find some scrap wood to practice upon.

 

* * *

John met Isabel a few days later. The weather had improved enough that he was trying to bring it under control. There was what might be a undergrown apple tree, a gigantic bush with dark green waxy leaves (mental note - check library for book on... plants...) that was trying to overtake most of the yard. And, of course, the roses. A few of those were quite obviously dead. The lawn was waist high with what looked suspiciously like game trails running through it. Deciding to open up space first (and let the mower mulch up any leaves) John first attacked it with a old-style plug-in electric mower whose cord had been repaired enough times that he fully expected to see sparks when he plugged it in. Afterwards John rummaged through the tool shed and came back with an old set of hedge trimmers, the scissor kind. It wasn't sharp and he might have been cursing a bit while he was attacking the bush, when he heard a voice from over the garden wall.

"It will be nice to see this tamed down, finally." Said Isabel, wearing sunglasses on a day that really didn't need them. She kept her hands on the wall, as if she was balancing on something to look over, or perhaps to push off if John decided to clip more then leaves with his hedge trimmer. Maybe he was cursing more then a little...

He took a deep breath and wiped his forehead. "I hope so. Between the garden, and the work that has to be done, I've half a mind to just torch the place and collect the insurance on it."

She looked shocked, as if she thought he actually was planning arson. He tried for a disarming grin. She didn't look relieved. "Well," she said "I will leave you to it then." and hopped down off of whatever she was standing on, leaving only the crown of her blonde head visible. John watched it bob back to the house and let out a breath he didn't know he was holding when the door slammed.

"Well, sod me." he muttered and went back to hacking at the bushes.

* * *

 

After his hands turned bright red and started itching like crazy, John looked up the plant with his phone. Just his luck to get the only Poison Ivy bush in all of the British Isles. Instead, he found he had a lovely Spurge Laurel. Which stunk like.. Well, a bit like exhaust... with a bit of something a touch nutty to it. Checking online he found that the sap was a major irritant, and that the leaves and berries were actually poisonous. Good thing he didn't cut himself! Carefully balancing a mug on the arm of the leather chair, he found the entry in the second volume of "Johnson's universal cyclopaedia: a scientific and popular treasury of useful knowledge, illustrated with maps, plans and engravings." ...the only book on botany that he had found. It read:

 _ **Daph'ne** , a genus of trees and shrubs of the order Thymelaceae, having a 4-cleft, funnel-shaped perianth, eight stamens, and a 1-seeded succulent fruit. The leaves are sometimes deciduous and sometimes evergreen, and are more or less arid. The berries are poisonous, but the flowers of some species are beautiful and of exquisite fragrance. The garou bush (_Daphine Guidium _) of Southern Europe, and the mezeron, both used in medicine, belong to this genus. The spurge Laurel (_ Daphne Laureola _) is a native of Great Britain. Paper is made in India from the bark of the Daphne cannabina; it is called Nepaul paper, and is distinguished for smoothness and durability._

"...and wasn't that helpful?" grumbled John to himself, and tried to not scratch.

 

* * *

 

One month later, the rains had returned. He had trimmed back the Daphnie, pulled three of the rose bushes, cut the dead branches from the apple, given the lawn a mow. He had gotten the man in to look at the plumbing (not as bad as he had thought), another to look at the electrical (worse then he thought), and the leak in the basement (they recommended demolition). He was now curled in the cracked leather chair alternating between the carpentry book, whittling on the dead limb from the apple tree, and occasionally getting caught up in a rather silly book about the detectives who caught serial killers. There was a nice rhythm to whittling, the hisssssshunt of the blade as it pulled a paper-thin layer off of one of the legs. A few completed pieces stood on the small table next to the chair, beside a cooling cup of tea. A few rejected pieces waited on the ground to be made into other parts or more likely to join the other rejects crackling merrily on the fire. John found that by curling up in the chair, his feet on the armrest, knees high, back curved - it let him rest his hands on his knees. He got pulled into his projects these days, finding himself spending hours doing housework or trying to run wiring or reading or whittling. When he slept, it was for 12 or more hours. More often, he dreamt of fire and screams and the smell of burning skin. The worst of them, he saw that small stuffed dog in the one house, it's cartoonish eyes looking up at him like it was pleading, while the fur caught fire...

The face was the hardest. He had a vague idea for his first one to name him after Pinocchio. Which he vaguely recalled as being Italian. He looked through the library here, then gave up and went to the library downtown. _(Add to the list of things to do... organize this pile...)_ Looking up Italian names, he wanted to call him Pinocchio, but had more creativity then that. He ran though the usual baby names and rejected most out of hand. Giuseppe, Francesco, Luigi, Giorgio... then, in a old volume from the mid-sixties, he found one that felt right. Moriarti. He knew an Irish boy in grammar school who was named Moriarty. Was the kind of kid who would eat a bug for a ten-pence. For some reason, this hit him right.

Looking at the block of wood that would become a head, he could almost see the face coming out. Moriarty's face which seemed to grin even when he was straight-faced. Slicked-back black hair... no reason. Just seemed Italian to him. Dark eyes. He hadn't decided on making a cap or not. John kept going back and forth on the idea.

John reached over for his tea. Stone cold. It tasted... off. How long ago did he make it? Come to think of it... when did he last eat? John looked out at the grey day... wasn't it night? Did he really just spend all night carving? He stretched his legs and his knee popped. His feet tingled... not quite asleep. His back ached from being curled up for so long. He stretched his back, twisted. He felt sore and achy, yet oddly the best he had since coming home.

"I'm just popping out to the corner for a curry or something." he said to the puppet.

He could almost hear it reply back. High, almost girlish voice _It's okay... I'll wait here..._

On the way to the shop (the corner restaurant was closed. Of course. It was only 8:00), so he had to catch a bus to the Tescos. He rode in silence, staring straight ahead, ignoring the other riders. There was a teen girl who was chatting on her mobile rather loud. A homeless man looked like he wanted to catch his eye so he could ask for change... John didn't even acknowledge him.

He hit the stop signal, and decided as the bus slowed, that Moriarti didn't want a cap.

* * *

 

Back home, with a bag full of microwaveable delicacies in one hand, and a microwave under the other arm, he could almost feel the accusation from the library.

_You are late. What took you so long?_

"The shop wasn't open yet. Had to go to Tescos."

You abandoned me.

"No I didn't!" John plugged in the microwave a realized he was arguing with a doll. He shook his head. "I need to get out more."

 

Microwave humming, a ridiculously large burrito turning inside, he returned to the library. Moriarti sat where he had left him. Definitely no cap.

He had a few moments while the food cooked. He picked up the knife and set to work on the head. He never heard the ding from the kitchen. By the time he remembered, John's burrito was cold again.

* * *

 

John worked extra hard on the face. It was easily the toughest part. Moriarti nagged him the whole time.

_Don't make my nose too big!_

"Don't worry. I'm not" John said, his tongue poking through his lips as he gently scraped out a nostril.

_Watch what you are doing, clod!_

"Mmm..." John carefully shaped the left eye. Just a little deeper...

There was a sudden loud bang from the wall. The knife skipped, gouging the wood.

_You idiot! What have you done?_

John stared in horror. The knife stuck into the wood. Much too far for what he was hoping. "Maybe... maybe it isn't so bad..."

_Of course it is bad! There is a knife in my eye!_

John carefully pulled the knife out. The damage wasn't too bad.. maybe he could carve around it.

Another sound came through the wall. Along with a sound suspiciously like broken glass and a moan of pain. The doctor in John took over and before he even realized it, he was out the door and knocking on 221a.

There was a sound, a shuffling, and more sounds of broken pottery. He tried the doorknob, it was locked. There was another moan and something that sounded like liquid. He hesitated only a moment before he kicked the door, sending it flying inward.

The layout of this side of the duplex was a mirror image of his own. So it only took a moment to get to the study. This one was made into a comfortable television room, with floppy couches and a low table. Near the fireplace was a ladder, and under the ladder was Isabel, holding her head while sitting in the blue and white shards of what was expediently a quite expensive vase. A framed painting lay nearby as did a hammer. A bright trickle of blood trickled from under where she held her hand to her forehead.

John crouched by her side.

"I.. I was just..."

"Shh-shh-shh..." he whispered. He gently took ahold of her wrist and pulled the hand away. She had a small cut on her forehead. Missed the Temporal Arteritis by a few centimeters. She'd bleed, but she was going to be okay.

He took her to the kitchen and sat her at the table. He grabbed a roll of paper towels on one of those spindle-things (what do you call those anyway?) on the counter, and wetted a few, before he settled down next to her, to clean the cut. "Don't worry." he said in his doctor-voice "I'm a doctor."

"I just..."

"It's fine." he said, deliberately not thinking of the puppet back in his own flat. "Fix this first, then we can worry about everything else."

"I just... feel so clumsy."

"Happens to the best of us. I once even tripped on a sidewalk."

That got a flash of an upturn on the corner of her lip, so while carefully pushing a dry towel to her head, he continued. "It's true. Lovely spring day, dry as a bone. I'm walking the sidewalk downtown, trying to find a taxi. I'm looking around, wave one down, and he actually pulls over. I start to run to run to take advantage of my good fortune, only somehow didn't step right. Ended up face first into the sidewalk. Made a sound I think they heard it on the top of Heron Tower. By the time I got up, a little old lady had taken my cab." He took her hand and guided it to the towel on her forehead. "Hold that. I've never trusted little old ladies since then."

She actually smiled at that "They can be viscious. Those little old ladies."

They sat in quiet for a moment. "Well, I should go. I think I broke your door. I'll be by tomorrow to see if I can fix it."

She reached out and touched his wrist with just a fingertip. "That... would be nice. Thank you."

* * *

The flat was in darkness when he returned.

"I'm home!" he called out, and felt immediately silly for it. There was no responce. He looked through the rooms as he entered. The kitchen off to the left was quiet and still. The sitting room to the right. The top of the stairs was dark and still. 

Morariti lay where John dropped him on the floor. His blank face stared at him. Scarred eye accusing.

"She fell. Hurt herself. I bandaged up her head."

No responce.

John crossed over and picked him up. The scar wasn't too bad. Barely noticeable, really. He put his tools away, and set Moriarti on the shelf. Then he turned to leave. His hand was on the switch when Moriarti spoke.

_You smell like whore._

John paused a moment, then turned off the light and headed to the stairs. Halfway up them he realized he had already started planning on the new puppet he would start in the morning.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Under construction

John set down the toolbox with a satisfying rattle. "You are lucky. I've been putting so much together next door, I've got just about everything you'd need."

 


End file.
